William Charman

Believed to have been:- Private - Norfolk Regiment

William Charman, the son of William Charman and his wife Sarah (Cullum), was born on 14th October 1889 in London, Middlesex. He was to have a younger brother two and a half years later when Arthur Alfred Charman was born in Hammersmith, London, on 14th March 1892. The boys father, William, was a police officer born in Storrington, Sussex in 1869 who married Sarah Cullum in Fulham, London in late 1891 some two years after young William was born. It is presumably for this reason that, for the first two years of his life baby William lived with Sarah's parents Henry Barber Cullum and his wife Maria (Larter) in Wood Lane, now part of Swardeston but in those days in Mulbarton. Once his parents had married William joined them in Hammersmith and both William and his brother were educated at Captain Marryats School in Hammersmith & Fulham, presumably one of the perks of being a police officer in London.

William married Anna Rosa Ellwood at Swardeston on 22nd May 1911 and their first daughter Olive was born five months later on 22nd November in Swardeston. They had two more children born at Swardeston, Frederick in early 1913, who died almost immediately and is buried at Swardeston, and Annie in 1914, before the outbreak of war. Immediately after the war, at the end of 1918, their fourth child Ivy was born, also at Swardeston. Anna Ellwood was born in late 1885 at South Elmham in Suffolk, the daughter of Frederick Ellwood and his wife Anna (Riches). She was working as cook at the home of Herbert Goodchild, solicitor, on Unthank Road, Norwich, in 1911 when she married William.

William and Anna's three daughters all married in the 1930s and had a total of nine children between them in the 1930s and 1940s and it can be assumed that several of these children survive to this day but are, as yet, untraced. The Charman daughters married names were Copping, Steward and Thraxton.

William Charman died in late 1944 but his wife Anna survived until 1968.

According to the Roll of Honour in the church William joined the Norfolk Regiment but, to date, no records whatsoever can be found for a William Charman serving with the Norfolks so, for the time being, his military exploits remain a mystery.

Return to WW1 1914-1918